sisters had seven children living, or a total of fourteen, seven boys and seven girls. All of these fourteen understood and spoke Finnish, to a greater or lesser degree, and a couple could also read Finnish. Of the boys, all except one had served in the armed forces of the United States during World War II, several of them overseas, and later one boy of the third generation, a member of the clan through marriage, died on the Korean front. Of these fourteen children of my sisters, eleven were married, but only one of them was married to a person who had been born of Finnish parents, so that through the marriages of the others there had come into the family persons of French, Swiss, German, Italian, Irish, Swedish and English and old American stock. Among them, and among their children, there was but one person who even understood Finnish. Thus a family which forty years ago had been completely Finnish had grown to a group of fifty persons which was no longer Finnish in language, customs, or even national background. If these people had come together for a family occasion, as they did, their meeting resembled a miniature United Nations."

Fayal Township

The discovery of ore in the region south of Eveleth proper led to the incorporation of Fayal Township in 1896. The more significant mines have already been mentioned; let it be said further that the Minnesota Iron Company owned the entire area in which the Fayal settlement gradually grew. The company, then, was in a position to rule what kind of buildings would be built, even what kind of business activities might be carried on there. Actually, all business with the exception of boarding houses was forbidden. As a result, the inhabitants of Fayal had to do their shopping in Eveleth, more than a mile away, behind a curtain of dense forest. For a long time a housing shortage prevailed, but as the company gradually encouraged families to move in, more homes were built. At the time Eveleth was moved another mile farther away, the population of Fayal approached the 1,000 mark. For a long time the roads remained poor, a condition which was not improved until the eve of World War II when a 1,800 foot stretch of highway paved with steel plates was laid down. Had this experimental highway proved successful, fantastic new pros

pects would have opened up for the steel industry, but climatological and other factors, including expense, ended the experiments here.

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